Green flag honour for 59 of Scotland’s parks

A total of 59 parks across the country have been honoured with a Green Flag this year. Picture: TSPL

A RECORD number of parks have been given a special award to recognise the quality of their environment.

A total of 59 parks across the country have been honoured with a Green Flag this year.

The award scheme, which is administered by the charity Keep Scotland Beautiful, judges green spaces on a number of different criteria.

For the first time parks in Dumfries and Galloway, Stirling and North Lanarkshire have been given a Green Flag, while parks in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Fife, Midlothian and west-central Scotland maintained their status.

“This is a reflection of how determined an increasing number of local authorities and park managers now are to make their parks the highest quality green spaces they can be.

“We’re very proud of all of our award winners, and particularly of the army of local volunteers who work all year round in rain or shine to make Scottish parks beautiful.

“Scotland has a wealth of parks and open spaces, vital to the physical and emotional well-being of our local communities.

“The Green Flag Award helps to provide a framework for partnerships between communities, local authorities, land managers and businesses to develop to manage our parks and open spaces in a more sustainable way.

“All over Scotland people are caring for their towns, cities and green spaces. Whether it’s through Green Flag or our other programmes such as Clean Up Scotland and Beautiful Scotland, local people are raising the bar and making their communities great places to live in.”

When handing out the awards, judges consider if parks are welcoming, healthy, safe and secure, clean and well maintained, and sustainable, as well as issues around conservation and heritage, community involvement, marketing and management.

Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse said: “Our 59 Green Flag parks are to be heartily congratulated on their achievement in meeting this important quality benchmark.

“Thanks to all the managers, staff and many volunteers who have contributed to making Scotland a fantastic place to live.

“It’s great to see that the number of Green Flag Awards in Scotland is increasing each year. The award-winners are also setting an example which I hope many others will follow.

“The availability of high quality greenspace and parks is very important for the health and well-being of the people of Scotland. Long may these commendable efforts continue.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.